William Preston Johnston, biographer and poet, was born at Louisville,
Kentucky, January 5, 1831, the son of the famous Confederate general,
Albert Sidney Johnston. He was graduated from Yale in 1852. During the
Civil War young Johnston was on the staff of Jefferson Davis. After
the war he was professor of history and literature in Washington and
Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, for ten years. In 1880 he
accepted the presidency of Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge.
Paul Tulane's magnificent gift in 1883 made Tulane University
possible, and Johnston became its first president. This position he
held until his death, which occurred at New Orleans, July 16, 1899.
President Johnston's _Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston_ (New
York, 1878), is one of the most admirable biographies ever written by
a Kentuckian. His graphic description of the battle of Shiloh, in
which his famous father met death and the South defeat, is now
accepted, even in the North, as the best account of that desperate
conflict. Had General Johnston lived a day longer no one can even
guess what it would have meant to the South and to the North.
President Johnston was also the author of _The Prototype of Hamlet_
(1890), in which his power as a Shakesperian scholar is well proved;
and he published _The Johnstons of Salisbury_. He was a maker of
charming verse, which may be read in his three collections, _My Garden
Walk_ (1894), _Pictures of the Patriarchs_ (1896), and _Seekers After
God_ (Louisville, 1898), a book of sonnets. As a man, Johnston was a
true type of the courtly Southern soldier and scholar.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New
York, 1888, v. iii); _William Preston Johnston's Work for a New
South_, by A. D. Mayo (Washington, 1900); _Library of Southern
Literature_ (Atlanta, 1909, v. vii).